It hardly needs to be stressed that black slaves were exploited. They had no political rights, and the law of the plantation and the whim of the task maker was the web of confinement the slave directly faced. Owners did not carelessly mistreat their slaves, for obvious reasons. By our measure, a prime male field hand was worth close to $600,000 in 2007 prices (see Economic Insight 13.2).
Various forms of punishments and rewards pressured slaves to be obedient workers. Few failed to witness or feel the sting of the lash and fear combined with the hopelessness of escape in maintaining control. Slaves’ standards of living were low but self-sustaining; these certainly would have been much higher if the value of their total output had been returned to them. However, because the property rights to their labor and their product resided with the white owner, their output accrued to the owner.
Richard Vedder (1975) has attempted to measure the economic exploitation of slaves in the South. His measure is based on the fundamental economic proposition that workers in competitive industries such as cotton production tend to be paid amounts that are equal to what labor contributes at the margin. An additional worker adds a certain value of output. Any sustained difference between the value of output the worker adds and what he or she receives may be reasonably termed economic exploitation.
I860 SLAVE PRICES IN TODAY'S VALUES
In 1860 a prime unskilled male field slave cost about $1,800. But how much is that in today’s money? One way of answering the question is by using a cost of living index (consumer price index).
A good estimate is that in 2007 the consumer price index was about 25.7 times the level in 1860. So using the consumer price index to inflate (to use the economist’s term) the cost of a slave gives a figure in today’s money of about $46,000 ($1,800 x 25.7). There are other ways, however, of putting historical values into today’s money. Wages of unskilled labor in 1860 were perhaps $0.10 per hour. Today the wage of unskilled labor, at least in some areas of the country, would be about $7.50 per hour. Using wages to inflate yields a figure in the neighborhood of $135,000 ($1,800 x [$7.5/$0.10]). A third way of putting $1,800 in 1860 into today’s money is by using per capita income. In 1860, per capita income was about $128; in 2007, per capita income was about $46,000. Therefore, using per capita income to inflate the value of a slave yields a value in today’s money of almost $600,000.
As this example illustrates, there is no unique way of putting things into today’s money. The best method to use in a particular circumstance depends on the reason for asking the question. Inflating by the consumer price index tells us what kind of consumption someone was forgoing by owning a slave. For example, if we wanted to get an idea of how much of a sacrifice someone made by freeing a slave, rather than selling him, the first calculation would be appropriate. The other calculations tell us something about how much power a slaveholder had within the society in which he lived, about how much “noise” (political, economic, and social leverage) slaveholders made in the world, to use Deirdre McClos-key’s term. If we want to know how valuable an asset a slave was in the production process, perhaps the high figure of $600,000 is most appropriate.
For the average slave, this difference (the value of output added minus maintenance costs) divided by the value of the output added was at least 50 percent and may have been as high as 65 percent.66
Of course, there was much more to the exploitation issue than simply taking one-half of each worker’s earnings. The mere entrapment of workers blocked their advance materially and otherwise by taking away their incentive for self-improvement and gain.
Perhaps the best thing that can be said about the economic conditions of American slavery is that typically they were not as bad as the conditions of slavery elsewhere. The drastic relative declines in the slave population in the Caribbean and in Brazil testify to the especially brutal conditions there. By comparison, the southern United States offered treatment that was life-sustaining. Slaves in the antebellum South experienced standards of material comfort that were low by today’s standards but well above those of the masses in many parts of their contemporary world.
World History
